by AYCACUN

YOU ARE ENOUGH

Is social media the gift or the curse? Been thinking about it more and more recently. While it started with a simple intent of connecting people to each other, eventually the way it transformed us is pretty alarming.

When I first moved to US, to me it was a tool to keep in touch with my family and friends back home. Seeing them on my screen even though they were miles away from me, made me still feel like I was connected to them know what is going on in their lives. Of course my mom was really happy about seeing me on a daily basis with my posts which made her feel like she was still close to her daughter as before since she would knew what I was up to on the other side of the world. Funny enough, I was getting text messages from her if I wouldn’t post anything for few days. She was checking in to see if I was okay or if something was wrong. It was more of a news channel where we stay in touch with our lives on a daily basis.

At the same time, social media fed our curiosities about a lot of things, to see new places that we have never been and get inspired. Even though those amazingly positive parts of social media still exists, it also started poking a monster within us. A poisonous thought pattern started growing within our minds. The inspiration and exploration of different places via your friends or people you don’t even know, turned into a trap. We started comparing our lives to other people. Watching them also started making us feel that crazy FOMO. It eventually made us believe that WE ARE NOT ENOUGH.

Not being pretty enough, cool enough, smart enough, rich enough, fun enough, you name it. All of a sudden we started feeling a bit off just because other people’s accomplishments strangely started making us question our values. We ended up feeling like we are always late to something in life. Late to get married and having kids, late to get a promotion, late to travel foreign places & learn new languages..so on so forth. The ultimate comparison poison get into our veins and we started struggling for real. But.. How real is what we see on our feeds?

You never know what is REALLY going on behind each picture. Those amazingly curated stories, all those pretty photoshopped images also hides same amount of pain and unhappiness if not more. Because life is never a flat ocean. It has its ups and downs, it comes I goes in waves. And in reality you will never know what is really going in in other people’s lives so WHY COMPARE?

It is time to come to that realization and stop feeling sorry for ourselves by comparing it to a few polished images. Maybe it is time to stop checking your feed all day everyday and every night. Or stop thinking of what will look cool on Instagram vs actually experiencing and enjoying a moment. Maybe it is time to start having a REAL LIFE AGAIN. Just like before Instagram or any other social platform. Like truly enjoying moments vs enjoying the “capturing” game. Maybe it is time to say NOto ourselves when we feel the urge to pick up the phone again & get lost in our feeds. It is time to give ourselves the opportunity to get bored again, get creative again and truly connect not only our higher selves but also to the loved ones.